THE MIND AND BRAIN SCIENCES APPLIED TO STRATEGIC COACHING

Breakthrough Strategies for Changes That Last

David Krueger MD

Seminar 1

A Scientific System of Mind, Brain, and Behavior

Introduction

By integrating sciences into the art of mentoring, and co-constructing a new story for clients, we shift:

From problem to possibility

From teaching to experiencing

From telling to listening

From observer to participant

From educating to collaborating

Operating Systems

95% of our behaviors and core beliefs are pre-programmed in the unconscious mind.

We create two stories simultaneously:

The surface story that we run our lives with conscious intentions and aspirations

The shadow story that ghostwrites behaviors

Contributions from Psychology and Psychoanalysis

1

Empathy: Listening position from inside the client’s experience

Theory of mind: The ability to see the world from another person’s vantage point

Neutrality: Remaining equidistant from a client’s dilemma, conflict, or ambivalence

Learn from the old story: The past teaches the present

When an emotion becomes a foreground issue it must be dealt with first

The intersubjective third: Two people in a relationship create a third entity

Regulating states of mind and managing emotions is a crucial success strategy

Understanding our own dynamics and the dynamics of others

Positive psychology and emotional intelligence move us from absence of disease to health

Cognitive behavioral therapy shows it is not essential to return to the origins of a problem to overcome it

Focus on the exception rather than the problem

A Specific Application from Psychoanalysis to Mentoring and Change

Transference: The repetitive ways of organizing current experiences based on past experiences

Two kinds of memories activated in coaching: Explicit (factual) and implicit (procedural)

Contributions from Neuroscience

Mirror neurons: A function of networks in different parts of the brain that function to reflect the behavior and feelings of others. Mirror neurons are instrumental in acquiring empathy, language, and social behavior.

People have prior knowledge that affects how they hear and respond to new information

The prior knowledge is physical, real, and persistent as a neuronal pathway in the brain

2

If we ignore reality, it will get in the way of new information and change

Partly because it is complex and personal and partly because it is subjective reality, people are not always aware of their prior knowledge.

Contributions from Quantum Physics

Quantum physics helps us understand energy fields

The activity of an observer affects what we observe.

The power is in the focus

The Law of Attraction

Individual and collective energy fields: The unified field theory (Einstein)

Contributions from Social Psychology

The influence of social networks:

If your immediate friends are obese, your risk of obesity is 45% higher

If your friend becomes obese, it increases your chance of obesity by 57%

If your friend’s friends are obese, your risk is 25% higher

This clustering of influence is caused by:

Mirror neurons

Induction

Confounding effect

Contributions from Buddhism:

When one area of the brain is engaged, other components will be engaged

Mind, brain, and body are a unified whole

Meditation increases the number of neurons in brain regions that mediate attention, compassion, and empathy

3

Meditation strengthens the immune system and improves psychological health

A Summary of Science Contributions

Psychoanalysis addresses coming to an end of whole story, but not how to strategically create a new story.

Quantum Physics recognizes the participation of the observer in the creation of reality, but omits motivation.

Neuroscience illuminates workings of the conscious and unconscious mind, while disregarding the spirit.

Psychology helps us understand the developmental role of effectiveness and mastery, yet remains silent on brain contributions.

Collaborative, Contingent Conversations

The coaching and the mentoring process is a collaborative, contingent conversation:

Collaborative: Both parties make contributions to an ongoing and contingent conversation

Contingent: There is no script, but what each person says is responsive to what the other just said

Mentalization: A Theory of Mind

A theory of mind – attending to states of mind in others and ourselves – involves two concepts:

Know yourself and your states of mind

Understanding the difference of the mind and experiences of another person

We prompt insight and awareness in areas such as:

Paying attention to new ways of thinking and behaving

Focused attention on what is positive

Avoiding exploration of motivation of why someone did something that didn’t work

4

Cultivate cognitive veto power on the negative and on the past

Map new possibilities to reflect on expectations and values to align with goals

Challenge and examine a client’s thinking that leads to a decision not to follow through on a commitment

Benefits of Mentalization Development

Those with a stronger empathic abilities can predict motives and actions of others, as well as understand and connect in a more comprehensive way

Envisioning a future self postpones impulses and engages productive activities

Mind Matters and Brain Business

Why do we resist change? Even changing a story that doesn’t work?

Part of the answer is in our minds

Part of the answer is in our brains

New Narratives and Old Brains: The Need for Story

When patients tell and listen to stories it has an impact on:

Blood pressure regulation

Illness outcomes

Attitude

We create our “selves” through narrative:

Right brain: Intuition, emotion, creativity

Left brain: Personal self-narrating thoughts and actions; the interpreter

function

5

Seminar 2

Mastery of Mind States and Neural Conditioning

Understanding States of Mind State of Mind: A mind-body state like a specific software program

Within each state of mind we perceive, remember, feel, think, behave, and

respond in a consistent mode.

Feelings always come first and trigger state change

Regulating States of Mind Don’t take it personally. The principle: Everyone is always making self-

statements.

Recognize the early warning signs of emotional triggers and response patterns. 3 vertical columns: trigger/usual response/ideal response

Reign in natural emotional responses

Access to Mind States How to access states of mind

Regulation of feelings and states of mind is the primary determinant of

mastery.

A Coaching/Mentoring Application

Regulating States of Mind Grounding and Centering Exercise (See Workbook Addendum)

A Brief, On-Your-Feet Grounding Exercise (See Workbook Addendum)

Self-control and self-regulation

Self-control: conscious, willful, intension with tangible, short-term goals.

6

Address self-control with a client by:

Establish intension

Set an immediate, concrete goal

Focus on a short time range for the specific response

Self-regulation: An optimum state of mind to access all information in each state

of mind

Awareness of individual biorhythms

Structure daily, hourly activity

Protect structured time

Management of State Specific Issues

Chokes: thinking too much, reverting instinct to cognitive observer

Slumps: sustained blocks or chokes

Blocks: thinking too little; panic or anxiety narrows perception, reverting

to instinct

Explicit and Implicit Learning and Performance

Explicit learning: conscious, specific, factual, and focused learning

Implicit learning: learning outside awareness such as a body memory

or procedural memory

The Neuroscience of Our Three Brain SystemsThe Reptilian Brain: The automatic, instinctive brain responsible for basic

survival behaviors, such as fight/flight, fear, hunger, reproduction.

The Limbic Brain: The mid-brain that governs our emotions by screening

incoming information and attaching emotional relevance and meaning.

7

The Neocortex Brain: The control center for logical thinking, intellect,

language, and emotional integration; mediates conscious thought and

long-term planning.

Recognize and Understand Emotional Couplings

New input goes directly to the amygdala (in the midbrain), then the

hippocampus (still in the midbrain) attaches meaning, then it goes to

the forebrain to process consciously and intellectually—to make logical

sense.

Decision-making processes in the brain can involve shortcuts in

analysis such as brands, familiarity, and trust

Emotional valuation can overwrite brain valuation

Two challenges:

o Recognize the process that I just described.

o Understand and objectify the emotional couplings that can derail

logic.

Two questions:

o What choices are worth making?

o How much does each choice cost?

Neural Conditioning What we associate to a stimulus is what determines our behavior

To change your behavior, change your neuroassociation.

Reprogramming—neuroassociative conditioning—is a process, not an

event. You

8

There are two forces behind all behavior:

The need to avoid pain

The desire to gain pleasure

If you’re not doing something that you want or need to do, you link more pain with

doing it than not doing it. I

If you’re sabotaging success in any area of your life, look at the approach

(want pleasure) and avoidance (have fear).

The usual focus is: what will the pain be if I do this? The need for focus:

what will be the pain if you don’t follow through?

How do you condition yourself to make changes that last?

To change your behavior: you have to change what you link to pleasure and

what you link to pain.

Three key principles of neural conditioning:

1. Identify what to change

If you don’t change your pattern, what will be the

consequences?

What is the pain associated to a current choice that is now

adaptive?

What will be the pleasure with changing?

2. Interrupt a pattern

What are the cues or triggers for your automatic pattern?

Think of ways to interrupt the pattern once you have identified it

3. Create a new association that empowers you

What is the new association to the familiar cue or trigger?

9

What is the change you want to bring about?

Think of all the things you gain and all the pleasure you have

with the change.

State of Mind Regulation

The most important thing we can do to achieve success is to manage our

emotions and regulate our states of mind.

There are two primary ways to regulate your state of mind.

1. Physiology

2. Mental focus

Physiology: To change your body – to change your state of mind. Refer

to the exercises about relaxation, deep breathing, meditation.

Focus: The meanings that we attach determine emotional impact. So, by

changing the meaning we can change the emotional impact.

10

Seminar 3

Mindset Mapping for Growth

Mindset

A mindset is a map – a software system that is complete and internally consistent

Growth mindset: Based on a belief in change. A growth mindset is based on beliefs that everyone can grow and change through experience and application

A fixed mindset: Based on unchanging beliefs. No amount of confirmation can dislodge a hypothesis, such as mediocrity, or the need to prove oneself. Fixed mindsets involve the belief that intelligence is basically unchangeable and fixed.

Mentoring mindset change:

o What can you learn from this?

o How can you improve?

Mind Maps: The Brain’s Story

We each have a number of maps or paradigms in our head. These belief systems become predictors, and evidence is sought to confirm them.

Macroscopic: Select the mental map that is most productive for a given task, or develop a meta-map

Microscopic: Awareness of the choice architecture of this moment and picking the best option

Map a New Story: Navigate With the Brain’s Error Detection Mechanism

The brain’s error detection mechanism functions to compare input with what is expected. A mismatch creates a disruption in the expected order of things.

The error detection mechanism accounts for some dynamic factors including:

11

We notice differences more easily than the expected

If advice is unfamiliar or unwanted, it sets off the error detection response

Focus on problems energizes because it activates this mechanism

Bad news gets our attention for the same reason

How the Brain Operates to Facilitate Change: 10 Principles

1. Change generates discomfort

2. Change creates dissonance

3. The brain is a prediction machine

4. Behavioral reinforcements can backfire

5. Motivation is not essential

6. Emotions change brain functioning

7. Stimulation and performance

8. Closure to novelty

9. Neurogenesis is the creation of new brain cells

10.Neuroplasticity simply means that the brain remodels itself.

Mapping Change: 6 Elements

1. Regulate states of mind

2. The power is in the focus

3. Visualize changes

4. Insight changes the brain

5. Take action

6. Transform identity

Some specific principals to help clients change behavior, mind, and brain

12

Begin where the client is

Help and learn more about what they already know

Highlight positive attributes

Don’t focus on mistakes

Correct mistaken couplings

Let sleeping dogs and old un-useful networks lay

Encourage clients to develop their own metaphors and connections

The brain has an intrinsic desire to create novel connections

The client has to recognize and take ownership of experiences

When we write a new story – and change our minds – we change our brains

Give attention to a new experience or new way of doing things consistently and repetitively

Roadblocks to Success

Derren Brown study

What is your “yellow chalk circle?”

13

Seminar 4

Update Your Operating System: Writing New Stories

The Brain’s Story of Self

Listen to the story that the source inside you tells

Tell your story the way you want it to be in order to actualize it

Whatever you are living or experiencing is in response to the story you are telling. A new telling needs to align with who you are.

When you practice your authentic story, your full energy and power becomes activated. You can keep telling and living a better story, no matter how good it is now.

Pre-commitment

Pre-commitment involves present planning and action against the strength of future desires.

Commitment Devices

People self-impose as well as co-create commitments for behaviors that they know are in their best interest.

Engineering Effectiveness

Thought loops: mentally replaying the same thoughts and reviewing the same scenarios again and again.

Specify the next step

Make changes tangible and concrete

Make progress measureable

Make progress visible

14

Choice Enhancement

Increased tension increases emotional regression

Increased emotion narrows perspective

When you’re in a state of upset, the first order of business is to regulate feelings.

Lump tasks according to states of mind required to do them

Learn the optimum state of mind for a particular task

Protect your time for an endeavor of a particular state of mind

Choice Architecture

People are motivated to be partly finished with a longer task or journey than to just begin an even shorter one. Frame a task to help someone feel they are closer to the finish line.

Frame

How you frame something can change the meaning.

To discern meaning, we need a context to surround it. The frame can even determine your state of mind.

A three-step combination to re-frame a comfort zone for change:

Visualization

Affirmation

Change your behavior

Focus

Circle of influence: Where you have direct impact—what you can determine—where you can be effective

Circle of concern: Things that arouse concern but over which you’re not immediately effective.

15

The results in your life are the result of your focus. Neuroscience validates that we get what we focus on, not what we want.

Brain research shows that focusing on problems or negative behavior enforces those problems and behaviors.

An exercise to enhance the power of focus:

Discover all the things that you focus on that you do not want. A “don’t

list”

Be very specific about what you do want. A “do” list.

Work on these lists over time because much of your awareness is not

conscious.

Each time you think about an outcome that you do not want, stop and

consciously change your thinking to focus on precisely what you do want.

Keep being aware and working on both lists. Practice changing your

focus. Persist in positive focus. Write down the lists and the revisions.

Motivation and Money

The nucleus acumbens – the pleasure center – lights up whenever money is gained or spent

The posterior superior temporal sulcus – the altruism center – lights up when we help others and form bonds

The pleasure center and the altruism center compete with one another

A Summary of Listening as Mentors

Put your ego in a blind trust

Listen to the language, whether active or passive

Listen to the reference, whether internal or external

Listen to the source of authority, whether self or others

16

Listen for the initiation of action, whether proactive or reactive

Listen for how centered the speaker is in his or her experience

Listen for the state of mind of the speaker, and whether it is regulated and fits the task

Listen for self reference in the first or second person

Elements of Mentoring Successful Changes: A Summary

Concentrate on new behaviors rather than problems in order to create new brain pathways. Identifying the problem won’t solve it.

Co-create new ways of thinking to stimulate brain circuits, with an “eye on the prize” to lay new mental maps.

Regulate your state of mind and manage emotions to promote brainpower. New insights and adaptations occur through balanced learning: left brain and right brain, intellectual and emotional.

Facilitate insight rather than give advice. People can usually discriminate between inquiries that prompt insight and attempts at persuasion.

Focus on successes rather than obstacles or nonperformance. The power is in the focus.

Emphasize positive adaptive behavior and progress; discourage attention to negative behavior.

Facilitate new behaviors and guide the development and actualization of new mental maps.

Collaboratively conceptualize the mental map—the internal model—of the client in order to facilitate a new level of mastery.

In the event of diversion to old feeling or behavior, redirect ideas and energy flow to the new ideas.

Remember that the power is in the focus, and that permanent change arises from the consistency of that focus.

Knowledge conveyed passively is inert; knowledge generated through insight changes the brain and mind.

17

Conceptualize the meta-map with the client in order to master and internalize the process. This helps create the outline to incorporate the new experiences as a storyline and part of an evolving identity.

Going Forward

The “Black Swan Effect” from the book by Nassim Taleb is a highly improbable event with three characteristics:

It is unpredictable

It carries a massive impact

After the fact we concoct an explanation that makes it less random and more predictable.

Science explains things now that were not even considered a century or even a decade ago.

Three examples: Neuroeconomics: The study of how the brain interacts with the external

environment to produce economic behavior; the brain basis of economic decision making

Behavioral economics: The study of how people really think and behave as opposed to how they think they think; the emotional and social factors that skew reason, ability, and rational decisions.

Emotional Economics®: The study of the interaction of mind and brain impacting money behavior and financial decisions.

18

WORKBOOK ADDENDUM

How To Get Centered in Your Body and ExperienceSpecific focus on attunement to present experience and state of mind fosters

connection of mind and body. If you feel detached or not grounded in your body

or experience, you may focus awareness on very specific details of your physical

body in your immediate environment.

Grounding yourself in your body allows you to center inside your experience and

attain a fully present state of mind. This grounding and centering creates a

sense of being relaxed yet alert, focused but not tense. The “present” state of

mind allows full access to all aspects of experience, especially self-awareness

and attunement.

GROUNDING AND CENTERING EXERCISE

1. Ask yourself: “How present am I?”

2. Go through a systematic review of your body and perceptions from it:

Feeling, perceiving, and moving each aspect of your body from toes to head

3. Make a systematic inventory each of your senses:

• Seeing

• Hearing

• Touching

• Tasting

• Smelling

4. Attune specifically to aspects of body function that may be calming: Focus

on and control of breathing, tensing and relaxing various muscle groups,

alignment of body posture.

5. Progressive Relaxation:

19

Sit in a comfortable chair and close your eyes. Clear your mind. Focus

only on your immediate bodily experience. Begin feeling the sensation of

relaxation.

• Take a deep breath.

• Breathe in relaxation. Breathe out tension.

• Focus entirely on your feet and toes; relax them completely.

• Let the relaxation move into your calves. Then to your thighs.

Notice the warm, heavy, comfortable sensation.

• Let the relaxation move into your hips. Then to your abdomen.

Then to your chest. Notice the relaxed, soft feeling of your muscles, and

the deeper breathing.

• Let the relaxation move up into your shoulders, and down your

arms to your fingers. Notice the heaviness of your relaxed arms.

• Let the relaxation travel up your neck into your face. Then to your

scalp. Then to your brain.

• Be aware of even deeper breathing. Continue to breathe in

relaxation, and breathe out tension until your entire body is in a relaxed

state.

• Decide when to stop the exercise. Allow a moment of transition to a

fully alert state.

• You will remember this experience in your body and mind and will

be able to access it more quickly each time.

A BRIEF, ON-YOUR-FEET GROUNDING EXERCISE

• Focus attention on your body

• Evenly balance your weight and posture

• Relax arms, legs, shoulders

• Breathe evenly and deeply

• Relax jaw, tongue, face

20

• Eyes look forward, aware of all fields of vision, including

periphery.

• Rub your feet on the carpet.

• If possible, jump up and down in place a few times.

YOUR MIND’S EYEThe Old Art and New Science of Visualization

A group of executives asked me to present a seminar to them on writing a

first book. My first question was,” Has any of you seen a yellow Jeep in the last

month?” Of the twenty-four people present, one raised his hand.

Then I went through a visualization exercise with them.

1. Close your eyes and visualize a yellow Jeep—the specific detail of how

it looks.

2. Walk toward it. Walk all around it. Look at the tires, the body, and the

trim.

3. Open the passenger door. Look at the seat, the steering wheel, the

dash.

4. Smell the interior. Touch the seat. Start it, and listen to it run.

Open your eyes. In the next week, see what happens.

I asked them to contact me if they saw a yellow Jeep in the next week.

Twenty-two of the executives contacted me in the first three days to say they had

spotted a yellow Jeep.

What happened? What someone sees—what appears on the radar

screen—is determined by belief and assumption. In that particular situation, a

yellow Jeep was preprogrammed as possibility.

For example, the most common reason people don’t earn more money

and accumulate wealth is that they don’t see themselves as capable of it. I can

tell you how much money people will make by listening to their assumptions.

Once someone genuinely sees himself or herself as capable of doing it, all sorts

21

of thing begin to happen. The amount of wealth—or number of yellow Jeeps—

existing in the world doesn’t change; you just code your radar for possibility.

It’s difficult to challenge long-held beliefs, because they are part of your

identity. A vision starts at the other end—the successful outcome. If someone

has a fear of success, or a fear of failure, the visioning process bypasses that

fear and etches the successful outcome.

In the film The Lookout, Lewis, a blind man, helps his mentally challenged

roommate make sense of things by thinking of his day as a story. Lewis said,

“Start at the end. Can’t tell a story if you don’t know where it’s going.”

Our possibilities are only limited to the ones we allow ourselves to see.

The Art of VisualizationA vision crystallizes possibility into a fundamental, articulated idea. A

vision gives hope possibility—a shape and form—to program your future while

rehearsing it. You inhabit the experience of your vision as guide to then guide

its creation

A vision serves as inspiration to design ways to realize it. The most

successful businesses have a vision that is also universal with each person in the

organization. Proven guidelines include the following elements:

You must construct your own vision.

The criteria to measure success need to be clearly defined.

Wanting to change, to start your life over, to be happy are all

imprecise and abstract goals.

Create positive terms for success.

Make your criteria in positive terms of what you want, what you will

do.

Be specific, simple, concrete.

Vague and theoretical criteria are not useful, because there is no way

to live a theory.

Be entirely present to your experience of the vision: Being in your

body, what

you feel, what you think.

22

Now: form a real vision. Picture yourself as you have just succeeded at

your goal at a specific time in the future, such as one year from now. Create this

success experience specific to time, place, how you would experience yourself,

and your body through all five senses. Hold the energy of the precise outcome

you've just achieved, the goals met, and the feelings it brings. Imagine the

details of the scene of your success inside and outside, engaging all senses,

thoughts, feelings, and bodily experience along with details of the scene. For

example, for a successful transaction, include the values and needs fulfilled, the

money you have made from it, the details of what you are doing, such as shaking

hands and ushering someone out of your office.

Carve out a few moments at the beginning and the end of each day to

“read” this vision. You’re programming a message for success in your mind by

creating the experience of having achieved it. This vision statement related to a

goal begins the experience and outline of a new story that you can then live into.

You do not have to be motivated in order to plan and act. A vision can

mobilize motivation. Even professional athletes drag themselves to the gym, get

started, and when they get in motion, then they access a motivated state. They

do not wait for motivation to get moving. Waiting until you get the energy to

exercise doesn’t work; you have to exercise in order to get the energy to

exercise.

A number of accomplished, creative individuals were asked how they did

what they did. Their response had a common thread: they just got up to do the

next thing, and only in retrospect did they recognize how important or how

immense it was. Or as one writer stated, “I'm just going to be here at my desk

from 8:30 to 12:30, and if anything shows up that's worth writing, I'll capture it.”

There are ten scientific, aerodynamically proven reasons why bumblebees

cannot fly. Yet they do. The bumblebee has transcended factual evidence and

obstacles to be able to fly. The bumblebee does not refute or overcome each of

the aerodynamic principles; it simply does not engage them and sets about

flying. Working through each of the problems, each bit of scientific data, to

disprove the notions of its inability to fly would not enable it to fly.

23

While resolution of a problem may bring an end to the past, that alone

does not create a successful future. Like the bee, your design is internal, and

which is what directs your journey.

The Science of a VisionRecent positron-emission tomography (PET) scans of the brain have

confirmed several things about visualization:

Visualization brings about actual physical changes in the brain.

The brain assimilates a mental picture whether the stimulus is actual from

the optic nerve, or imagined; the brain cannot distinguish between a

mental image and an actual image.

When you repeat a vision of successfully attaining a goal, the act

programs neural networks and neuronal pathways to etch the experience

more strongly.

Mental visualization of a complex movement can actually improve

performance.

PET scans have established the fact that thoughts cause physical

changes in your brain.

When you program your unconscious, you actually create a “future

memory” to live into. The brain can’t tell who conjured it—you or reality. The

more detailed your visual image, the more specifically etched your brain will be.

We know that by simply picturing a danger, we can trigger the entire body’s

responses of fight or flight.

Here’s the key: You do not make the brain changes permanent unless

you incorporate them into your story. Doing so makes it part of who you are—

your identity. Otherwise, the change either doesn’t register, or gets extruded as

noise.

For example, if you see yourself in a successful business, you create the

specific imagery to live that experience. You then incorporate it as part of your

identity, rather than as belonging to someone else.

24

While your unconscious mind cannot tell the difference between

something you physically see and something you mentally picture, your

conscious mind can do so, and your conscious mind must incorporate an

evolving story to include and assemble the imagery as part of the story.

Otherwise, unconscious messages will delete access to or believability of the

imagery.

Here are the key elements:

Repetition. The neural networks dedicated to your vision must be

renewed and repeated regularly, or they will be eliminated.

Conscious incorporation of this new vision into an ongoing story to be

ultimately metabolized as part of the self. Otherwise, you will “lose” this

vision.

Specificity about the experience of having achieved the goal.

A footnote: Write it down. Research on memory tells us that a new idea

or fact lasts an average of 40 seconds in short-term memory before it’s gone,

unless you write it down to review.

Visualization crystallizes possibility into an articulated idea—the

experience changes the brain. A vision serves as guide and inspiration to design

ways to realize it—to live into it.

When you program your system with a visualized goal, you create

structural tension in your brain—cognitive dissonance—the difference between

where you are and where you visualize and affirm. Your brain then strives to end

this tension by actualizing the goal. Structural tension (dissonance) in your brain

will do the following things:

Give you creative ideas

Help you see things in your environment not seen before—a

perceptual shift

Provide motivation to take action (remember: The universe

rewards action)

Major James Nesmeth spent seven years as a prisoner of war in North

Vietnam. During the time he was imprisoned, he was essentially isolated and

25

had no

physical activity. . Before the war, Major Nesmeth was an average weekend

golfer, hardly breaking 100. To preserve his sanity, he learned to visualize golf.

He selected his favorite country club. He saw himself dressed in golfing clothes.

He experienced everything in great detail. He smelled the fragrance of the trees

and grass, made each stroke with his entire body.

After he was released from his captivity, playing golf in his mind seven

days a

week for seven years, on his first outing he shot a 74.

Affirmations to Support VisualizationsAffirmations make visualization a complete story. To achieve a goal,

reprogram your automatic pilot by affirmations. Affirmations are positive

statements that state the goal as if it has already been achieved. For

affirmations to be optimally effective, the following characteristics need to be

incorporated.

Present tense

Begin with, “I am …” State the goal as if you have already achieved

it. “I am enjoying this month of skiing in Steamboat.”

Positive

Your brain will strive to achieve the image you focus on (close your

eyes and notice the images that come to mind when you think, “The

dog is not chasing the cat,” or “I am not thinking about elephants.”)

The purpose of an affirmation is creation of an image; a positive

image is more powerful than ideas

Personal.

Make your affirmations about your experience and

accomplishment. Do not try to change other people’s behavior. “I

am watching my daughter clean her room” won’t work

Visual

26

Use all five senses, different lenses: include wide-angle and close-

up; make a complete picture of experiencing the success of your

goal

Emotional

Include a feeling word (happily interacting, peacefully

experiencing). A primary reason we do things is how we imagine

we’ll feel when we do it

Brief

Brevity is the soul of wit—and affirmations

Specific

Clearly focused, specific detail makes it real. No abstractions.

Action words

“I am driving … acting … living …”

If you say, “I am going to …” you will always be on the way

Consistent

As soon as you let up on the disciplined, focused pursuit of a goal,

your automatic pilot will revert back to the familiar. This is the

frustration of losing weight and then letting up to have it all come

back. Remember the astronauts who got Day 15 off and had to

start over?

Add “Or something better.” “I am enjoying my month each summer

writing on the coast of Maine, or something better.”

Write each goal and affirmation on a 3 x 5 card. Read each one at the

beginning and the end of each day. Remember to visualize yourself as having

already achieved the goal.

How long do you do this? Until you reach the goal.

How many goals should you generate affirmation for? A reasonable

number—at least three—maybe more—that you’re working on daily.

In this way, you create the feeling of internal success. You inhabit the

experience.

27

An affirmation will initially make you feel uncomfortable, even anxious.

With an affirmation that is positive and not yet achieved, you challenge the core

belief of your identity and systematically create the template of a new life or

business story.Excerpted from: Outsmart Your Brain: An Instruction Manual by David Krueger MD www.NewBrainStory.com

28